The shift from the reliable commercial
vendors of old to the open source servers that have cropped up over
recent years can clearly be documented. Little over 2% were using
Oracle’s WebLogic and IBM’s WebSphere, effectively sounding the
death knell for their enterprise efforts unless something can be
done quicksharp to turn that round. A key advantage that open
source servers have is the ease of licensing when deploying to the
cloud.

Interestingly Oracle’s open source
server Glassfish doesn’t appear to have encouraged the adoption
that their caretaker would want, with less than 3% of those
surveyed using it. JBoss’s AS holds steady at just under 10% of
those questioned, which is a fairly good chunk when against the
might of Apache and Eclipse.

Apache Tomcat is lightyears out in
front as the choice for developing web applications with a 54%
majority. Companies are likely to favour the server’s longevity –
after all it’s in its 7th incarnation and has over ten years
experience. After recent weeks where debates have raged over the
benefits of having the Apache label in the longrun, it appears that
Tomcat is going from strength to strength, after getting the
certification rubber stamp for TomEE back in October.

It’s interesting to note that the
survey from New Relic included a broad cross-section of industries
(as noted above), including companies such as IGN, AT&T and
Comcast. It’s clear that some servers are tailored for needs of
certain industries. These findings do show that open source servers
may be streets ahead, but an informed decision based upon the
enterprise needs is the best method to take.

Strangely, a survey
conducted by EnterpriseDB back in 2010 found that almost half
of those asked believed open source would ‘barely hang on’ under
Oracle’s guidance. How foolish that view looks now. Open source is
still rising.